SELF-MADE: Creating Our Identities from da Vinci to the Kardashians, by Tara Isabella Burton The Kardashians have sold so much to America — shapewear, cosmetics, beverage upon beverage — why not throw ideas onto the pile? That highly contoured family pulls up like a caboose at the end of Tara Isabella Burton’s “Self-Made,” a fast-moving…
Name an L.G.B.T.Q. landmark. Perhaps it’s the Stonewall Inn on Christopher Street in Manhattan. Maybe it’s Castro Camera, Harvey Milk’s shop in San Francisco, or even the Coral Sea Islands, where activists started their own micronation to advocate the legalization of gay marriage in Australia. All three places appear on Queering the Map, a digital…
The credenza in the back of the Mercedes-Benz Sprinter van groaned as Lars Balderskilde drove through the woodlands near Vejle, a city on a fjord about two and a half hours from Copenhagen. It was late January, and after passing a lake filled with swans, Mr. Balderskilde stopped at a house where he picked up…
When “Padam Padam,” the Australian pop star Kylie Minogue’s 77th (77th!) single, was released last month, it was embraced almost instantaneously by a certain type of listener. L.G.B.T.Q. people, especially gay men, greeted the campy song with gleeful incredulity, and its infectious chorus quickly spawned memes upon memes upon memes. As is often the case with pop music phenomena,…
In its first week, a fertilized human egg develops into a hollow ball of 200 cells and then implants itself on the wall of the uterus. Over the next three weeks, it divides into the distinct tissues of a human body. And those crucial few weeks remain, for the most part, a black box. “We…
“It became an instant informal hit,” he said. (A banger, if you will.) Jewish youth groups, inside and outside the United States, adopted it. By the 1940s, Jewish people in the diaspora started singing it in the aftermath of the Holocaust. “It became a symbol of happiness, and a symbol of joyful renewal and survival,…
Although Mr. Leavitt is not formally trained in meteorology, his interest in the weather began when he was employed, from 2014 to 2018, at the entertainment company AEG Presents. He worked on the safety alliance team for concerts and became fascinated with the concept of mitigating risk through weather detection. The team used meteorological technology…
Pero me dio una idea. “Papá, ¿qué te parece esta viñeta?”, le dije cuando se despertó. “El peor cardiólogo del mundo. Vemos a un médico operando a alguien, sosteniendo en alto su corazón dañado como si fuera una trucha, diciendo: ‘Este corazón tiene un aspecto horrible. Menos mal que todo el mundo tiene dos’”. Mi…
This article contains spoilers for the Hulu series “The Bear.” Even before the bump in Italian beef sandwich sales last year, you could sense an immediate, almost feverish enthusiasm for “The Bear.” You could measure it, not in actual views (Hulu doesn’t release streaming data), but in thirsty memes of Carmen (Carmy) Berzatto, the broken chef…
Mountaineers have long climbed atop Mount Everest, and scientists in submersibles have descended into the Antarctic Ocean. In recent decades, travelers with deep pockets and little expertise have joined these explorers or even ventured further, paying to visit the bottom of the ocean or the edge of space, touching the literal bounds of Earth. But…